#“but what about Solas?” 15 minutes after saying some Sus Mage Shit he was suplexed onto a pile of rocks

[diamond-dangeresque]

so since apparently our decisions post-DAI don't matter anymore for Veilguard (except for like...three of them???), here's the endstate of my three PCs cause fuck it,

Damara Amell successfully leads a revival of the Grey Wardens in Ferelden, keeping close contacts with the Free Marches via agents in Kirkwall but spending much of her free time and energy on the country she proudly calls home. With the main army well-trained and a reserve of potential recruits kept listed and tracked, Damara moves her mental energy towards curing the Calling and other afflictions of the Wardens, in the meantime fiddling with designs of a "perfect Tower system" based on those like Rivain's Circle Dairsmiud and other "heretical" Circles. She and Alistair live happily both as Warden and Constable and as husband and wife, taking lots of time off (on Alistair's insistence to Damara who enjoys running herself ragged) and enjoying each other's company whenever work slows down. If she could have kids, she'd like to have two as tradition teaches her...but even one would be enough, really. Damara worries about who will be able to continue her works as Warden-Commander should she have to answer her Calling before either "the cure" or her "Tower pet project" can be completed, but Alistair reassures her to trust the system she's spent blood, sweat, and tears to rebuild.

In a move considered incredibly ballsy by most, Damara has used her Warden contacts to locate various Towers and "used the Rite of Conscription" to pull all four of her siblings from their respective locations back to her side; a move that Alistair is shocked his wife has the capacity to pull but respects the idea behind it. And while their memories of Big Sister Damara from the past are varying degrees of fuzzy and nondescript, they're happy to be with family again and will work with her (even if she's not letting them "drink the forbidden grape juice," as youngest brother Theodore jokes) no matter what. And with as much of her family back as Damara can reasonably gather, she feels even more strongly an urge to protect them as much as she can...even when they insist they can protect themselves (especially Alistair, despite all claims to "Yeah, I got stuck in thr Fade for a bit...I mean, I got out and got better, didn't I?" falling on deaf ears).

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Corrin Hawke never truly settles down in one place after the events of Kirkwall all those years back, but as long as he's with Anders he's as happy as can be. The two keep each other in relative good health: Anders can use his alchemical and healing expertises to help Corrin sleep when his insomnia because particularly miserable, and Corrin in turn can help keep Justice in check when he tries to spiral Anders into a more uncontrollable state. They wander much of Northern and Central Thedas together, lending their combined aid to folks as a seasoned mercenary/adventurer and experienced healer respectively, never asking for much payment apart from shelter and food if it can be afforded for a night. Money is appreciated but rarely received, and just as well. The sights seen during the events of the Inquisition's rebirth have changed them both profoundly—it broke Anders's heart to see the depths of depravity and madness both sides plunged into during the worst of the fighting, and he feels tremendous guilt of the innocent deaths claimed in these fights—but their resolve was strengthened once they reached the borders of Tevinter and saw the good they could still do here: slaves to free, corrupt people to cut down, and new dungeons to scavenge and explore. Every once in a blue moon the two hear rumors of a "blue wraith" somewhere cutting down slavers and their ill, and they endeavor to meet again with Fenris where they can and catch up. The three once shared some pilfered bottles of red and drank under the night sky, regaling to each other stories collected over the years. Then they would move on, Fenris the first to pack his things and leave followed by the pair once Corrin actually wakes up, and life would continue until the next time a crossing of paths is fortuitous enough.

Damara has extended a hand to her second cousin before, telling him in so many words (across so many letters...) that he and Anders are always welcome under the wing of Ferelden's Grey Wardens, and that she'd even (try to) forgive the things Anders did between his leaving of the Wardens and now. And Corrin would always send back the same answer for them both: "Thank you for your generosity. We'll think on it." A way to say no without actually saying no.

Corrin had always felt like staying in one place for too long drew misfortune to him. Lothering in the distant past, Kirkwall not long afterwards, and even the Inquisition suffered for a bit around his prolonged presence. But here, on the road with a horse as they carry all they need to survive and helping those who won't be helped by others, he feels at his safest. Home is by his beloved's side, and he won't have it any other way.

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Jessa Trevelyan and the wounded "demon" who once wore her face calling itself Odile are for the most part a satisfactorily-bonded pair. Jessa's life is still distinctly in Odile's hands, and it leaving her would most assuredly kill her, but Odile reaffirms that its past nature is "leashed" and that her raging feelings of envy can be utilized to "become things, not people," as it were. Satisfaction through gaining titles and earning ranks, becoming important rather than stealing importance, was something that took a while for Odile to adapt to but loved when she did. Jessa is still quite pious, though leading the Inquisition has shaken her faith tremendously, and now works with Chantry scholars plus mage academics across Thedas in demonology so as to help create a better understanding of what she believes is "a willful ignorance created by a Chantry of old, a Chantry so afraid of recreating the Imperium's hubristic mistakes". She keeps contact with Ferelden's Warden-Commander, someone also keenly interested in her demonology studies, and often sends musings of her own about the topic through discreet letters under "curious scholar" pseudonyms.

Her marriage to Cullen Rutherford can at times be tumultuous, but such is the bonding of two thick-headed individuals who love each other dearly. Jessa's not stupid, and she knows part of Cullen's attraction to her started because she was initially a "dead-ringer" for the woman of Cullen's past, a way for him to behave as he would have wanted all those years back in Kinloch Hold but wasn't able to. Both had a lot of things to work through over the years but both now believe they've earned the other's love and respect: she doesn't believe herself a poor man's doppelganger for a true hero any longer and can flourish under her own merits and her own face, and he can finally let the past be in the past and let go of those last yearning feelings for a woman who moved on first.

It still hurts where Jessa's left hand once was. A travelling healer once called it "phantom limbs", the lingering sensations of a body calling out for parts that no longer exist upon it. Sometimes the pain is excruciating, and it kills any desire to do much but grip her arm and lay in bed, wracked with persistent pain. Sometimes, if a thing needs to be done, Jessa will let Odile wear her face again and act in her stead; its sense of pain isn't as bright or clear as Jessa's, and when it's all done Odile can fall back to recover her own energy. Cullen doesn't know, or at least they (Jessa and Odile) don't think he knows. In their defense of this one lie they've maintained over the years, the two are so keenly similar and close now that telling the two apart is an act of splitting hairs. They share memories, thoughts, actions...

Sometimes he acts like he knows. She'll tell him one day. The situation with the Breach, the multiple incursions into the Fade that only exacerbated the issue...one day she'll tell him. It's not an easy thing, after all, to tell your ex-Templar husband you're technically an abomination.

(He does. And he understands that this is a secret kept out of shame rather than any sort of malice. She'll tell him when she's ready, he tells himself. He's seen worse, he's seen stranger. And it's not as if he doesn't notice the sudden mood shifts, or the shifts in pain tolerance during some days. But he understands Jessa has been through so much, through more than he can imagine, and that whatever or whoever exactly she is, is a result of this journey. And he loves her all the same.)

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